Report Says Manes May Have Met Fbi

April 21, 1986|United Press International

NEW YORK — Donald Manes, who resigned as Queens borough president amid a corruption scandal and then killed himself, may have been with FBI agents before his first suicide attempt, New York magazine reported on Sunday.

The magazine`s column, the ``Intelligencer,`` reported in its April 28 edition the Queens district attorney`s office was investigating Manes`s whereabouts the evening of Jan. 10, before being found near Shea Stadium with his wrist and ankle slashed.

Manes survived the incident but killed himself two months later.

``Now police lieutenant Remo Franceschini is looking into `the FBI theory,``` the magazine said. ``He has information that Manes may have spent the evening with FBI agents who were trying to get him to `flip` and become a government witness.``

The magazine quoted a source saying Manes knew by Dec. 31 about the corruption investigation to which he was linked.

A later federal indictment in the case -- one of 11 resulting from a probe of an extorton-bribe scandal involving the city`s Parking Violations Bureau -- charged Manes met with his friend and deputy director of the parking agency, Geoffrey Lindenauer, that day and paid him $58,000 if he would promise to leave the country and not talk.

``So it`s not unlikely that by Jan. 9, he had agreed to meet with FBI agents, and that they were trying to get him to come over to them and wear a wire for them, and it was that pressure that drove him to try to kill himself,`` the magazine said.